March 2017

Problems of Reforming the Institute of Early Pensions for Work in Harmful and Hazardous Conditions

By Yury Mikhailovich Gorlin, Nadezhda Galieva, Elena E. Grishina, Marina A. Eliseeva, Vladimir Kartavtsev & Anna Cheremnykh (RANEPA) One of the main lines of the strategy for long-term development of the pension system of the Russian Federation, approved by the Resolution of the Russian Government is the reform of early retirement institute. In this area Russian Government set an additional tariff of insurance premiums for employers who offer hazardous work; a special assessment of the working conditions is being made,...

Embedded Flaws of the Bulgarian Pension Funds or the Code Against the Insured

The Bulgarian pay-as-you-go publicly managed pension system is complemented by default and voluntary defined contribution pension funds, managed privately. The regulatory regime of the private pension funds is such that turns them into: unsuitable, uncompetitive and ineffective pension products. Privately managed pension funds are unsuitable, because they are not aligned with the investment horizon and the risk tolerance of individual investors. They are uncompetitive since their track record is of delivering below market returns for above market fees and charges....

Using Panel Tax Data to Examine the Transition to Retirement

By Peter J. Brady & Steven Bass (Investment Company Institute); Jessica Holland & Kevin Pierce (Government of the United States of America - Internal Revenue Service) Using panel data from the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, we find that most individuals do not experience a reduction in inflation-adjusted spendable income after claiming Social Security. We also examine the composition of income after claiming and find that both Social Security benefits and non-Social Security retirement distributions typically represent...

Automatic Adjustment Mechanisms in Asian Pension Systems?

By Elif C. Arbatli, Csaba Feher, Jack Ree, Ikuo Saito & Mauricio Soto (International Monetary Fund) Automatic adjustment mechanisms (AAMs)-rules ensuring that certain characteristics of a pension system respond to demographic, macroeconomic and financial developments, in a predetermined fashion and without the need for additional intervention-have been introduced in many OECD countries to tackle public pension schemes' deteriorating financial sustainability. Incorporating AAMs-in particular linking retirement age to life expectancy-can be an important part of pension reforms in Asia. If implemented...

The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (General Levy) (Amendment) Regulations 2017

The general levy on occupational and personal pension schemes recovers the core funding provided by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for 3 public bodies: The Pensions Regulator The Pensions Advisory Service The Pensions Ombudsman This consultation seeks views on the proposed rates of the levy for the financial year 2017/18 onwards. This consultation is primarily aimed at pension scheme trustees, managers and administrators. We also welcome comments from the wider public. (more…)

February 2017

Pensions, Retirement, and the Disutility of Labor: Bunching in Brazil

By Benjamin Thompson (University of Michigan) Abstract:      Elderly workers in developing countries face certain frictions, such as credit constraints, in their retirement decisions that may not be as common among their counterparts in the developed world, and these concerns may lead workers to work more or less than their preferred number of years. In this study, I firstly use regression discontinuity methods to show that a large fraction of urban male heads of households in Brazil (roughly 45%)...

Health, Health Insurance, and Retirement: A Survey

By Eric French & John Bailey Jones (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond) Abstract:      The degree to which retirement decisions are driven by health is a key concern for both academics and policymakers. In this paper we survey the economic literature on the health-retirement link in developed countries. We describe the mechanisms through which health affects labor supply and discuss how they interact with public pensions and public health insurance. The historical evidence suggests that health is not the...

Rethinking Pension Reform (English Edition)

By Franco Modigliani & Arun Muralidhar This book, first published in 2004, presents an academic and a practical aspect on managing pension funds to clarify the global debate on social security. The authors establish the basic choices in designating any system to help policy makers develop the system that achieves their many objectives. They examine reforms in Latin America to highlight flaws and to estimate the true cost of these reforms and factors affecting these costs. The authors then...

Reforming retirement age in DB and DC pension systems in an aging OLG economy with heterogenous agents

By Joanna Tyrowicz, Krzysztof Makarski and Marcin Bielecki We analyze the effects of increasing the retirement age in two economies with overlapping generations and within cohort ex ante heterogeneity. The first economy has a defined benefit system, and the second economy is in transition from a defined benefit to a defined contribution. We find that if increase in the retirement age is phased in a way that allows agents to adjust, welfare is not reduced and welfare effects have a...

Redesigning pension systems: the institutional structure of pension systems should follow population developments

By Marek Gora For decades, pension systems were based on the rising revenue generated by an expanding population (demographic dividend). As changes in fertility and longevity created new population structures, however, the dividend disappeared, but pension systems failed to adapt. They are kept solvent by increasing redistributions from the shrinking working-age population to retirees. A simple and transparent structure and individualization of pension system participation are the key preconditions for an intergenerationally just old-age security system. Full Content: EconBiz